In the (School) Zone of Different Cultures
The beeline—Did this school sign from The Gambia presage 2020 education
or where kids wanted to go?
© Kirszen
School Zone Signs of the Times
All over the world in 2020 school traffic stopped and not just in the crosswalks. Now buses are creeping back to school, kids are in the crosswalks again, and our minds at OIC have moved from online education to the lines on school zone signs in different cultures.
Sign designers have the challenge of a small canvas driven by the need for clarity and by endless government guidelines on color, shape, and messaging. Road sign specs in the US government manual alone amount to 862 pages, and most other countries also make the effort to standardize. Still, while school zone signs and other road signs are a labor of uniformity and full of constraints, they show more about different cultures than you might think.
Fashion Statements?
In the USA, the...
